Spending the better part of an hour using soap and warm water to remove all visible dirt from your immediate station and surrounding area results in you having ______.

• A. Sanitized it
• B. Cleaned it
• C. Disinfected it
• D. Polished it

Answer: (B)

Using soap and warm water to remove visible dirt is an act of cleaning. Cleaning physically removes dirt, oils, and debris from surfaces. It doesn’t necessarily kill germs, which is what sanitizing or disinfecting aim to do after a cleaning step. Polishing would be about shine and surface smoothness, not dirt removal or microbial control. So, spending time washing away visible dirt yields you have cleaned it.